The White House fended off criticism Tuesday that Republicans exploited the terrorist attacks by using a White House photo of President Bush in action on Sept. 11 to attract fresh donations for GOP congressional candidates.

Press secretary Ari Fleischer said the White House ... was not concerned about the use of photos showing "the president doing his job for the American people."

— AP, May 14, 2002

"You’re asking about the so-called ‘dots,’ and whether or not it was possible for anyone in the government to connect all those dots."

"There were thousand of dots out there."

— Ari Fleischer and an unnamed official commenting on reports that the president failed to act on repeated terrorist warnings.

The Boston Globe, May 17, 2002

Some of those dots, as reported in the Globe: a July memo from an FBI agent warning that "Middle Eastern men were acting suspiciously at a flight school in Phoenix"; an August 6 CIA report, handed to Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, warning about possible hijackings; an early-September memo from an FBI agent warning that Zacarias Moussaoui might try to "fly something into the World Trade Center"; and FBI reports, dating back to 1995, warning that "Bin Laden associates were developing plans to hijack commercial airliners and hit the Pentagon and other US targets, including large buildings in New York ..."

The Democratic party today fended off criticism about its decision to sell less-than-flattering photographs of President Bush. One of shots, which seems to reveal how the president really received those facial injuries in early January, shows Bush being hit by an SUV on a street near his ranch in Crawford, Texas. When asked why the president had taken no action to avoid the truck, even though he had seen it coming a good fifteen seconds before it hit him, an unnamed official explained, "There are millions of vehicles out there."

Some of the photographs on offer, meanwhile, reveal Bush in a decidedly pensive mood. One of them shows the president holding a sheet of paper, a perplexed expression on his face. "The president was reviewing the morning’s breakfast menu," said White House press secretary Ari Fleischer. "His choices were ham and eggs or corned beef hash." Eventually, Fleischer continued, the president opted for blueberry pancakes. "There are hundreds of breakfast foods out there," remarked an unnamed official.

In other shots, Bush seems more relaxed. One photograph, taken in the Oval Office, shows the president munching on a bowl of bite-size pretzel pieces and grappling with a join-the-dots puzzle. Though a White House insider revealed that the puzzle was meant to depict a giraffe, the photograph clearly shows that the president had drawn an elephant. When queried, an unnamed official said, "There were scores of dots on that page."

There are also photographs showing Bush "doing his job for the American people." One depicts the president in the White House briefing room, during an August 7 security meeting. In the background there is a chart depicting the flight path of two airliners as they barrel into the Twin Towers. Beneath this there are the words: "Osama Bin Laden is planning to hijack two planes and smash them into the World Trade Center on September 11." When asked why the warning wasn’t heeded, an unnamed official declared, "There were dozens of issues on the table that day."

Perhaps the most controversial photograph in the collection, however, is of the president, his face twisted with rage, waving a memo, on White House stationary, the words of which can just be made out: "George Bush is a bumbling idiot." Administration officials, meanwhile, downplayed the incident. "There are at least two George Bushes out there," asserted an unnamed official.